


Hope at the Fight

by inverseR



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Byleth's gender in this fic was decided by coin toss, Canon Compliant, Grieving, Introspection, M/M, Male My Unit | Byleth, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), but at what cost, linear narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverseR/pseuds/inverseR
Summary: Dmitri never realised the way Byleth loves them all in a sweet-and-easy way he'd taken for granted when he was younger and times were simpler.Now here's the rub: all this casual affection means Dmitri can reciprocate.or, Dmitri figures out forgiveness is a bit like being stabbed.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 13
Kudos: 62





	Hope at the Fight

“Don’t move.”

Dmitri startles as Byleth’s hands appear at his sides, fiddling at a chink in his armour he hadn’t noticed.

It is a quick affair to simply tighten up the straps and close off the gap, but Dmitri hadn’t let any human being this close to his personal space and for a while he stood gaping at Byleth’s head.

Some part of him remembers being younger, being smaller when the smell of his professor’s hair was inevitable as Byleth fixed his armour for him. He stands awkwardly still, and he catalogues the minute differences from right now and five years ago.

Byleth’s hair still smells the same, like metal and flowers and magic. The glow to it is different, he had known this when Byleth ripped the skies open and came back to them all ethereal and empyrean, but the reminder of it has his breath hitch and his heart stutter. Byleth is…Byleth is _of the goddess_ , this what the old books mean when they sing of pantheons that stand on Battlefields. Byleth is otherworldly and unattainable.

But Byleth finishes fixing his armour for him and lays a hand where the chink was and it doesn’t feel like he’s being stabbed between his ribs (and he would _know)_. It’s just Byleth’s hand. None of the dainty softness of nobles’ hands, Byleth’s hands are roughened and calloused from fighting, from using a sword, from surviving.

“All done,”Byleth nods at him, clinical as always and when he pulls away, Dmitri feels some part of him go with him. The ghosts of Duscar he carries with him stay quiet for a while.

*

Sometimes the ghost he carries with him ease a little, it happens often after battles, when exhaustion eats away into his bones, but there is still work to be done.

It had been a quick mission to rout bandits, or it would have been. Byleth’s manoeuvres had centred around Mercedes, designing their entire strategy so that Mercedes can get more frontline battle experience. The mission dragged longer than usual, but it seemed worth it from how pleased Byleth was with Mercedes’ progress.

Garreg Mach is still close enough to be seen, but the party could not hope to make it back before the no-star night swallows the world whole. Heavy overhead clouds promise a storm and Dmitri spies some of his fellow classmates glaring at the sky, daring it to rain.

Maybe it’s losing an eye, or maybe it’s because he’s five years older now (but everything still seems the same, the Blue Lions are here, Byleth is here, his family is dead) – Garreg Mach and its broken walls and crumbling portcullis, the windows lit up for the night, seemed to him like the remains of some fire-breathing creature come to life.

It’s an odd thought to have, something half-mythical and half-folly. Dmitri has always known, to some extent, that his life is going to be one for the history books. His stepmother had shown him the Faerghus archives when he asked about his birth mother, and there were all these dusty tomes and scrolls and there was half his name scrawled in old pages falling apart. Dmitri realised then that all of the births in the archives were his too, his lineage, his ancestry.

When he arrived in Garreg Mach and there was Byleth, nameless and ageless and without history, he’d realise that not everyone has the privilege of being remembered. Take Ashe for instance, Ashe cooking for the camp with Annette because only Annette and Ingrid can stop Sylvain from stealing a bite, and Ingrid is with Mercedes, resting from the battle.

Ashe dreams of being a knight and how far would he get without a name? If Dmitri never met Ashe, would history remember him?

Garreg Mach, half in ruins and half awake for the night, reminds Dmitri of the archives in Faerghus (so far away, with an imposter on the throne), and the lonely distance between it all makes Dmitri feel so small.

Dmitri startles when Byleth pushes a bowl into his hand. The broth made is warm-fresh and Ashe has gone to get Mercedes and Ingrid while Felix takes over defending the portion Annette doles out. Byleth plants himself right in front of him and eats.

“I’m not hungry,” Dmitri says and Byleth – Dmitri had forgotten this in five years, but Byleth doesn’t glare, not quite. Byleth eyes him in a way that says “and so?” and continues to eat mechanically without breaking eye contact.

It must be an intimidation tactic, even all of Dedue’s silent beseeching is not as effective as byleth’s glance.

Dmitri eats.

*

Dedue returning is no less of a shock and Dmitri suspects Byleth is more elated about it than he is.

Byleth had not replaced Dedue’s role as an anchor for the backline and so Dedue fits in neatly like an All-Saints Day gift that everyone forgot they needed. At the end of the battle, Byleth doesn’t hop up immediately to go talk to Dedue, but waits patiently while the rest of the Blue Lions pile onto Dedue.

“Give,” Byleth demands. Dmitri blinks. Byleth points at his javelin, his many (many, Sothis, why does he have so many) lances.

People that try to take his weapons generally end up, well, some variant of broken or dead. Dmitri thinks of the ankle-deep corpses at the cathedral of Garreg Mach, he thinks of the rogue who was foolish enough to attack him. Dmitri thinks of broken heads and dead eyes and bleeding people that never stop bleeding and never move again.

Byleth doesn’t move to take his weapons, but – in a move that surprises even himself, Dmitri passes his weapons over.

Byleth nods and perches nearby and Dmitri watches Byleth sharpen his weapons on a whetstone. Checking through them and assessing which need replacing or just general maintenance.

It hits him then (between Felix’s annoyed-afffectionate grumbles and Ingrid’s bickering and Dedue’s slow, calm responses) that nothing has changed.

Byleth is still his teacher, someone who would hone his blade and take care of him when he needs to. Between maintaining his weapons and making sure he eats and checking his armour – none of this is new. This, this and all that is something Byleth used to do, and still does for him.

Dmitri thinks: do I deserve this? Can I have this?

And it cuts him to the quick when he realises the answer is: you will have this. You do not have a choice in that. You have always had this.

It’s like knowing the stars shine, and garlands die, and the Garreg Mach fishing pond never freezes for winter and is always, always there – with life-giving waters for the crops in the greenhouse and the schools of fishes in it.

Byleth will always be there, has always been there.

*

The idea to split up on Gronder was tactically sound all the way up until it _wasn’t_.

The ghosts howl and howl and Dmitri sees red, red, _red_ as Byleth cuts through the lines of Golden Deer army, downing concoction after concoction. He can’t get there fast enough and Ashe can’t shoot far enough to defend Byleth and Ingrid can’t be spared because Ingrid is defending and –

_Red. Everywhere._

Edelgard is right in front of him – Areadbhar is glowing ember-crimson and wailing. Aymr doesn’t have the range Areadbhar does and Dmitri is so close to killing Edelgard he can hear his father screaming, the ghosts of Duscar are waging cacophony and dinning pandemonium.

Dmitri takes the first swing, but it is Byleth that arrives on time to cripple Edelgard, the Sword of the Creator whipping through the air, slicing through reality.

Edelgard pulls back and the battle is over. Dmitri is whirling around, furious and ready to follow Edelgard all the Sothis-damned way to Enbarr (that pulsing heart of that vile empire), but Byleth isn’t even looking at him.

He had heard stories from Alois and Hanneman, that Byleth was once called the Ashen Demon, for his complete apathy when it comes to killing. Byleth stabbing the Sword of the Creator into the ground and sighing in aggravation with his hands on his hips, is not at all Ashen Demon conduct.

And then he hears deranged screaming that isn’t his own.

And then Rodrigue takes a stab meant for him.

The sun splits the sky brutal infanticide red for this, the stake of Edelgard’s unnamed god claiming, claiming, _claiming._

_*_

Byleth catches him before he murders a horse to ride to Enbarr and murder Edelgard along with it.

This is new, Dmitri thinks, watching Byleth plead with him to not go.

And then he realises, this isn’t new.

Byleth has been pleading with him a lot recently, sometimes to talk, sometimes to learn Reason. It’s some kind of morbid fascination, to learn that he can render the Ashen Demon to helpless supplication.

Five years ago, Byleth must have made the same face when Dmitri pushed past him to cut down Edelgard.

The ghosts drum and drumming the way dead things with no heartbeat pulse and throb.

Here’s the spare bit of rib, hidden between scars on his back that Dmitri never told anyone about:

(He placed princess once when Ingrid, Sylvain, and Felix were kids because Ingrid was sick of playing princess and was about to tell Glenn that they were succumbing to Chauvinistic double standards and toxic masculinity.)

It scares the ever-living shit out of him to know that Byleth will-be has-been is-right-there for him.

So many people had died whom he thought was going to stay forever. His mother, who should have always been there, died right from the start, and everyone else since then has left.

Everyone leaves, and only their ghosts.

Dmitri is an abandoned palace, a haunted cathedral, he is dead bones and dead names and if he thinks of Byleth like he thinks of people who stay, he’d leave his ghost in him too.

Dmitri is so, so scare of people leaving.

Byleth watches him and he is pleading and this isn’t new. Can you imagine?

And Dmitri –

Dmitri thinks it is time he took a shower.

*

It’s a thunderstorm outside, and in that not-this-world where Dmitri wasn’t death-soft enough for Byleth to stop, the horse he rode to Enbarr on would have broken its leg tripping through mud and rock and maybe Dmitri would have broken his neck along with it. 

As it stands, Dmitri goes to the lot of them all to say that they’re all going home to Faerghus. Some of them are upset, Ashe especially because he’s not actuall from Faerghus and he was stranded on the other side of Gronder with Leonie chasing after him.

Oh-and Felix. Felix is always upset about something or the other, but he is bitier-bitter about the death of his father.

Dmitri knew this, but he is remembering it all over again. Felix looks _nothing_ like Glenn and Rodrigue, absolutely nothing. Felix is all of his mother’s beauty and none of Glenn’s height and Rodrigue’s stubbled cheer. Felix is cynical and cynically stubborn.

So when Felix smacks him with insult after insult and acid-sour things about Rodrigue’s death, and ends it all by calling him his name, Dmitri is cheered enough to _sobs._ Never in his life did he imagine this.

Gustave hears of their plans to go back to retake Fhirdiad, and nearly calls him “Your Majesty” again and in-between avoiding that, Dmitri hears that Byleth is looking for gladiolus.

Dmitri doesn’t so much hate gladiolus as much as he doesn’t understand he fuss with them. Sure, they look a bit like stabby-things, but they are not, and therefore, kind of, in Dmitri’s humble opinion, really-fucking-mocking to be used as the standard burial flower for a warrior.

He has seen them on the pyres dedicated to the tragedy in Duscar because there hadn’t been any bodies to burn or bury, just so many bouquets. Fhirdiad smelt like burnt flowers for weeks, and all of the gladiolus.

Dmitri really hates gladiolus.

But this is new. Byleth looking for flowers to gift to the dead is new. Dmitri has seen Byleth furious in grief and ravenous for revenge, but this is entirely new.

Byleth passing mourning flowers to Gustave is something…it’s something the old books have never described. Dmitri has seen Byleth gardening with Dedue and Deude cautioned Byleth against watering Duscar flowers.

This is something like that, Dmitri thinks, like giving something precious something unliveable and watching it bloom.

Dmitri doesn’t know what that means, but he’s thinking of Faerghus, of home. He’s thinking what Byleth did to the dead-dragon-bone walls of Garreg Mach, and he wants to do the same to Faerghus. Fill Fhirdiad’s sinews with flowers and its marrow with light and maybe when all the graves are gardens, he can have forgiveness.

*

Byleth looks at the map of Fhirdiad and Dmitri feels naked, exposed.

This is the kingdom he abandoned to go haunt a monastery that the gods had forsaken for decay. The ghosts of Duscar and all of Dmitri’s dead ancestors are not going to be as loud as the insurgents, as the people of Faerghus calling for their king.

The map of Fhirdiad on the table is an autopsy of Dmitri’s greatest mistake, cracked open bones and bared skin, holding out his own heart to say “please, please fix this”, cradling his own liver and saying “I don’t know what to do with this, please help me.”

Years and years of strategic studying says: lay it on siege.

Cut off supply lines and starve the capital from the inside out. That is the strategic decision, given how their battalions keep dwindling and the Alliance’s diplomacy switches sides on the flip of a coin. Laying siege on the capital would be the most cost-efficient decision, and they may even hold Cornelia hostage that way to prompt Edelgard into discussions.

But this is _Fhirdiad_. Faerghus is calling for their king beyond the wall, what kind of king gets coronated while knowing the insides of his own people’s stomach? What kind of king gets coronated after starving out his own people?

Dmitri feels like he exists in Ingrid’s ethics books. To follow strategy, or to be a good person? Dmitri does not want to know the answer, he does not want to contemplate the question.

And yet, here they are with the map before them, and he has to contemplate it. And history contemplates with him, and Dmitri wants to scream at his ancestors, at his crest, at his god: take it back! Take it all back! If this is what all this means, take it back! I don’t want it!

It’s a day or two or twenty years of waiting for spy reports from the inside of the capital, and then another day (or twenty more years, Sothis kill me) of commanders and soldiers crowding around a map of Dmitri’s failures.

And then Byleth, Sothis incarnate, stabs his heart and says: “we will take the Capital.”

Can you imagine?

*

Dmitri, at one point in his life, obsessed over armour.

It had seemed so simple. Wear it so its purpose is fulfilled, take care of it so that it can continue to be at your side. It was the same set of rules repeated everyday because it’s not what is done that matters, but the doing.

Here’s a funny thing he learnt to (the ticklish bit under his ribs): the word armour comes from armare. When the gods are sly and come tot eh battlefield in a trick of light, armare can look like amare. Amare means, to be in love with.

It doesn’t mean anything, but-that when the Blue Lions are off to take Fhirdiad (capital of Faerghus, heart of Dmitri’s heart) and he sees that Byleth’s armour has a chink in it, he knows what to do.

He puts a hand on Byleth’s shoulder and bids him still. He moves to fix the error at the side of the breastplate. If he remembers his lessons rights, that’s somewhere between the third and fourth rib.

“That could have been dangerous,” Dmitri finishes.

Byleth, when he smiles back in answer, is bright and quick enough to be a trick of the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi-hi, comment for director's commentary and for all the references to other media, because **in snake oil seller voice** lemme tell ya there was some fun shit that didn't make it in.
> 
> **Edit: Author does not condone a union between a church and the state and believes that the state can function as intended and represent the interests of the people only when it is kept separate from the church.


End file.
